Marilyn was the organizer for the retreaat held in the Elk Horn church last weekend. She works almost exclusively in batiks and makes some great quilts. We're always excited to see what she brings for show and tell. She was nice enough to leave several of them to exhibit at our Tivoli Fest Quilt Show which will be Saturday May 29.

The group in our retreat center last weekend comes twice a year and know they can make themselves at home. Her friends tell Marge that she brings everything but the kitchen sink - they also know if they for got something she'll probably have it.

Roberta was working on projects for the bridesmaids at her daughters wedding. The Minkie shower wraps were really great. She also made them each tote bags.

Karen brought her recently quilted feathered star quilt to show us. What an ambitious project.

I coudn't resist showing you this. Kathy (who was at one of the three quilt retreats held in Elk Horn this past weekend) just finished our block of the month from 1998 and brought it to show me. We had evidently just suffered through a bad Winter when I designed and named this one -"It's Iowa, it can snow anytime"! Let's just hope that was an exageration.

The three groups were doing sdome beautiful work. I'll show you some examples in the next few days.

My sister brought some of her new projects to my Mom's house. They are all done in wool or wool felt. I think they are really good and we will probably carry the patterns for all of them when they are ready.

I spent yesterday and today with my Mom and sisiter. Mom had some minor surgery which went well.
She's working on another crazy quilt, and this one is mine! We laid out the blocks to see how we wanted to set them. Once again she used a lot of old neckties - many of them came from those of you who gave trhem to me.

We'll have two sales reps at the shop tomorrow. There will also be three quilt groups in Elk Horn this weekend ) in our Retreat Center, the Town Hall and the church basement. We should be pretty busy.

Carol just completed this cute sample. It makes me smile because I feel like it's an order - can't wait to see gardens again. We do have crocuses blooming on the South side of the Retreat Center.

Charlie and I spent the afternoon hauling limbs away (result of our January ice storm - there's been too much snow until now). We'll have several more days of that then start on sticks. There's so much small trash, too that I know we'll probably have to rake everything. Once again I say we love trees but this year might test us.

A couple of days ago Fabri-quilt sent me small yardages of all my fabrics. I think we should have bolts in about three weeks. I'll use what I have now to make samples for Quilt Market. For the most part I'm really happy with all the pieces and I hope all of you will like them, too.

So sorry! My computer has been down for several days. I ended up having to purchase a new one and of course all my data had to get transferred - all that takes time. Anyway, I felt lost without it. Before we bought our first computer ( back in the middle 90's) Charlie and I congratulated ourselves on the fact that we were so old we would not have to learn how to use computers. How wrong we were. Now neither of us would know what to do without them.

Our Stashbuster class last Saturday was lots of fun. Despite the weather, most everyone came.